It has become impossible to tell managers mesmerised by artificial intelligence that the tools are not, in fact, helpful. So employees just play along with the fiction to keep their jobs, writes our tech columnist
^ This. This is the actual truth of it. You can always find a 500 person company that does a shit job at forced integration and you can find a 2000 user company that tied all their systems together and moved at paces that made everyone sick with risk. You can find individuals who tried to make copilot write micron code (horrible) and who used claude to write ansible code (~magic)
I love Doctorow, I read most of his stuff, I recently read Reverse Centaur, it had its informed moments. It made some strong points that stand out as to where using AI makes sense. It also has some perspective issues, being written by someone who focused on case studies with the worst possible outcomes. A lot of the same problems in this article.
AI can, in the right circumstances with the right needs, remove many manhours of tedious shitty labor, or it can be used by shitty people to vacantly crap out slop 24x7. It’s only as useful as its implementation/workload.
But what never gets better is the societal and ecological impact. The slop pouring into journalism, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and the scams running with perfect English vocabulary. The shitty AF water and electricity usage. The corporate bribery. Those are along for the ride by default.
If AI went away, right this very moment, my job would grind to a snail’s pace for months while we once again pivot back to another way improved but not unlike we did prior. We would have a man-century of meetings on how to recreate all the processes affordably. We are doing more now with fewer people, but they’re paying more in tokens + labor. This is not to say that any of us would be horribly sad.
This article is based on a case study by one guy on a 500-person company that didn’t want to implement AI and did a poor job of implementing it. Yeah, many of us work for some place like that and some of us work for places that got it working. That’s the reason for the big divide. It’s not always a delusional asshole lying about it working, it’s about it working when engineers who have the right workload use it to solve their needs. Still too fucking expensive on all accounts.
AI is not worth the investment. It’s not worth the money. It’s not worth the damage. But the argument that it doesn’t do anything because you see it do jack shit somewhere doesn’t hold up to even light scrutiny.
^ This. This is the actual truth of it. You can always find a 500 person company that does a shit job at forced integration and you can find a 2000 user company that tied all their systems together and moved at paces that made everyone sick with risk. You can find individuals who tried to make copilot write micron code (horrible) and who used claude to write ansible code (~magic)
I love Doctorow, I read most of his stuff, I recently read Reverse Centaur, it had its informed moments. It made some strong points that stand out as to where using AI makes sense. It also has some perspective issues, being written by someone who focused on case studies with the worst possible outcomes. A lot of the same problems in this article.
AI can, in the right circumstances with the right needs, remove many manhours of tedious shitty labor, or it can be used by shitty people to vacantly crap out slop 24x7. It’s only as useful as its implementation/workload.
But what never gets better is the societal and ecological impact. The slop pouring into journalism, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and the scams running with perfect English vocabulary. The shitty AF water and electricity usage. The corporate bribery. Those are along for the ride by default.
If AI went away, right this very moment, my job would grind to a snail’s pace for months while we once again pivot back to another way improved but not unlike we did prior. We would have a man-century of meetings on how to recreate all the processes affordably. We are doing more now with fewer people, but they’re paying more in tokens + labor. This is not to say that any of us would be horribly sad.
This article is based on a case study by one guy on a 500-person company that didn’t want to implement AI and did a poor job of implementing it. Yeah, many of us work for some place like that and some of us work for places that got it working. That’s the reason for the big divide. It’s not always a delusional asshole lying about it working, it’s about it working when engineers who have the right workload use it to solve their needs. Still too fucking expensive on all accounts.
AI is not worth the investment. It’s not worth the money. It’s not worth the damage. But the argument that it doesn’t do anything because you see it do jack shit somewhere doesn’t hold up to even light scrutiny.